Shocked, Pained, Angered and Hurt...

By what is happening in Mumbai over the last 12 hours.

God, be with the people who lost their lives and sacrificed theirs in their crusade against terror.

Update 16 hours after the attack began:
Q: So have they finished with Mumbai yet, ripped her breast, and crushed her beating heart and silenced her ?
A: No

21 hours into the siege

Waiting for the military operation at sundown.

34 hours into the siege

The war has taken on epic proportions.

I hate to ask the obvious and oft repeated question--should this really take this long?

Are we ill-equipped/ incompetent?
I don't want to admit to anything not when 25 Mumbai policeman have died. Not when THE Army has stepped in.

Don't we deserve better?

Like Suhel commented yesterday, cant we be the instruments of change?

36 hours later

Casualties: 25 policemen, 137 civilians, unknown number of NSG.

Some of us have the option to turn away from the disaster, by changing channels, switching off the television, not the men on guard in Mumbai. The real men are those who are manning the hotels, engaging with the terrorists, rescuing the hostages ; not the wimps, who rule the state and center, who issue lack lustre robotic statements from prepared pamphlets, not those publicity hungry politicos, who show up at the site of terror to be 'seen' to give a 'soundbyte', and thereby posing a security hazard and unwarranted distraction to our already harried security personnel.

Shobha De on TV yesterday: We as taxpayers have spent billions on providing Z plus security to these politicians, and what do we get in return? Terror attacks of some form in some part of the country, every other month.

I agree-- they owe us an explanation.

I am reminded of a scene from the film Mumbai Meri Jaan, where one of the protagonists, is mulling whether he should move to work in the United States. He then finds himself in the midst of the train blasts in Mumbai. He is caught between loyalty for his country and the lure of a better life in the Americas. Moved by the resilience of the city, after the blasts, he decides to stay on.

How many times are we going to call upon each other to be resilient.

How many of us are thinking: I deserve better!